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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What sport does the author play come spring?
(a) softball
(b) tennis
(c) basketball
(d) golf

2. How much of life which has ever been created, is living at the present time?
(a) around 45 percent
(b) 80 percent of all life ever created still exist
(c) about ten percent
(d) about half

3. When Dillard moves from describing details of creation to trying to understand more about creation what is she doing?
(a) trying to think too much
(b) moving from logic to mysticism
(c) moving from what to why
(d) getting a little strange

4. How long does it take a tree to recreate ninety-nine percent of its living parts?
(a) twenty-five years
(b) one year
(c) thirty days
(d) a lifetime

5. How were Starlings are introduced to America from Europe?
(a) they came over with a European circus
(b) they were sold as pets to a Virginian family
(c) by a man who wanted all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare to be present in America
(d) they came in on a boat from England

Short Answer Questions

1. If there were only one tree in the world, what would happen, according to the author?

2. If you could watch the unfolding through time of every thing that ever existed on Earth, what does Dillard say you would see?

3. Why do birds sing?

4. What about the creek creates healing sounds?

5. Dillard believes that, with indifference, nature hides what?

Short Essay Questions

1. Dillard is somewhat obsessed with how creation reproduces itself and the excess with which it does so. How might this "obsession" relate to Dillard's own life or self?

2. In Chapter 3, what has the reader learned about Dillard's attitude towards living creatures?

3. Dillard watches a mosquito feed on a copperhead snake. What does she think of the act?

4. How does Dillard relate parasites to her view of life?

5. How does Dillard believe her time at Tinker Creek has helped her?

6. Describe the two ways of seeing, according to Dillard.

7. Why does Dillard question both the morality and the compassion of nature?

8. Up to now Dillard has tried to just "notice" creation. In Chapter 8, Section 2, her focus changes. How does her focus change and what might it symbolize?

9. When Dillard scrapes the wings of a couple dead butterflies, what might this symbolize?

10. Why do the Eskimos hunt in the fall and what can happen if they fail?

(see the answer keys)

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